stomach was strong. During the war, being a conscientious objector, he had volunteered to 
serve in the Military Hospital, and there were few transformations of the human body he 
had not seen in one combination or another. Tenderly, he cradled the body, not noticing 
the blood. He hadn't loved this man, scarcely cared for him at all, but now all he wanted 
was to take him away, out of the ape's cage, and find him a human grave. He'd take the 
photograph too. That was too much, giving the beast a photograph of the three friends 
together. It made him hate Phillipe more than ever.
  He hauled the body off the carpet. It required a gargantuan effort, and the sultry heat 
in the room, after the chill of the outside world, made him dizzy. He could feel a 
jittering nervousness in his limbs. His body was close to betraying him, he knew it; 
close to failing, to losing its coherence and collapsing.
  Not here. In God's name, not here.
  Maybe he should go now, and find a phone. That would be wise. Call the police, yes. . . 
call Catherine, yes .
  even find somebody in the house to help him. But that would mean leaving Jacques in the 
lair, for the beast to assault again, and he had become strangely protective of the 
corpse; he was unwilling to leave it alone. In an anguish of confused feelings, unable to 
leave Jacques yet unable to move him far, he stood in the middle of the room and did 
nothing at all. That was best; yes. Nothing at all. Too tired, too weak. Nothing at all 
was best.
  
  The reverie went on interminably; the old man fixed beyond movement at the crux of his 
feelings, unable to go forward into the future, or back into the soiled past. Unable to 
remember. Unable to forget.
  Waiting, in a dreamy half-life, for the end of the world.
  It came home noisily like a drunken man, and the sound of its opening the outer door 
stirred Lewis into a slow response. With some difficulty he hauled Jacques into the 
wardrobe, and hid there himself, with the faceless head in his lap.
  There was a voice in the room, a woman's voice. Maybe it wasn't the beast, after all. 
But no: through the crack of the wardrobe door Lewis could see the beast, and a 
red-haired young woman with him. She was talking incessantly, the perpetual trivia of a 
spaced-out mind.
  'You've got more; oh you sweetie, oh you dear man, that's wonderful. Look at all this 
stuff.'
  She had pills in her hands and was swallowing them like sweets, gleeful as a child at 
Christmas.
  'Where did you get all this? OK, if you don't want to tell me, it's fine by me.'
  Was this Phillipe's doing too, or had the ape stolen the stuff for his own purposes? 
Did he regularly seduce redheaded prostitutes with drugs?
  The girl's grating babble was calming now, as the pills took effect, sedating her, 
transporting her to a private world. Lewis watched, entranced, as she began to undress.
  'It's so. . . hot. . .in here.'
  The ape watched, his back to Lewis. What expression did that shaved face wear? Was 
there lust in its eyes, or doubt?
  The girl's breasts were beautiful, though her body was rather too thin. The young skin 
was white, the nipples flower-pink. She raised her arms over her head and as she 
stretched the perfect globes rose and flattened slightly. The ape reached a wide hand to 
her body and tenderly plucked at one of her nipples, rolling it between dark-meat 
fingers. The girl sighed.
  'Shall I . . . take everything off?'
  The monkey grunted.
  'You don't say much, do you?'
  She shimmied out of her red skirt. Now she was naked but for a pair of knickers. She 
lay on the bed stretching again, luxuriating in her body and the welcome heat of the 
room, not even bothering to look at her admirer.
  Wedged underneath Solal's body, Lewis began to feel dizzy again. His lower limbs were 
now completely numb, and he had no feeling in his right arm, which was pressed against 
the back of the wardrobe, yet he didn't dare move. The ape was capable of anything, he 
knew that. If he was discovered what might it not choose to do, to him and to the girl?
  Every part of his body was now either nerveless, or wracked with pain. In his lap 
Solal's seeping body seemed to become heavier with every moment. His spine was screaming, 
and the back of his neck pained him as though pierced with hot knitting-needles. The 
agony was becoming unbearable; he began to think he would die in this pathetic hiding 
place, while the ape made love.
  The girl sighed, and Lewis looked again at the bed. The ape had its hand between her 
legs, and she squirmed beneath its ministrations.
  'Yes, oh yes,' she said again and again, as her lover stripped her completely.
  It was too much. The dizziness throbbed through Lewis' cortex. Was this death? The 
lights in the head, and the whine in the ears?
  
  He closed his eyes, blotting out the sight of the lovers, but unable to shut out the 
noise. It seemed to go on forever, invading his head. Sighs, laughter, little shrieks.
  At last, darkness.
  
  Lewis woke on an invisible rack; his body had been wrenched out of shape by the 
limitations of his hiding-place. He looked up. The door of the wardrobe was open, and the 
ape was staring down at him, its mouth attempting a grin. It was naked; and its body was 
almost entirely shaved. In the cleft of its immense chest a small gold crucifix glinted. 
Lewis recognized the jewellery immediately. He had bought it for Phillipe in the Champs 
Elysees just before the war. Now it nestled in a tuft of reddish-orange hair. The beast 
proffered a hand to Lewis, and he automatically took it. The coarse-palmed grip hauled 
him from under Solal's body. He couldn't stand straight. His legs were rubbery, his 
ankles wouldn't support him. The beast took hold of him, and steadied him. His head 
spinning, Lewis looked down into the wardrobe, where Solal was lying, tucked up like a 
baby in its womb, face to the wall.
  The beast closed the door on the corpse, and helped Lewis to the sink, where he was 
sick.
  'Phillipe?' He dimly realized that the woman was still here: in the bed: just woken 
after a night of love.
  'Phillipe: who's this?' She was scrabbling for pills on the table beside the bed. The 
beast sauntered across and snatched them from her hands.
  'Ah.. . Phillipe. . . please. Do you want me to go with this one as well? I will if you 
want. Just give me back the pills.'
  She gestured towards Lewis.
  
  'I don't usually go with old men.'
  The ape growled at her. The expression on her face changed, as though for the first 
time she had an inkling of what this john was. But the thought was too difficult for her 
drugged mind, and she let it go.
  'Please, Phillipe. . .' she whimpered.